The thread on the K-S1 design is almost full, so I will post my 5 cents worth as a new thread. In the following I will not touch on the LEDs as I – as yet – do not see their purpose and before I see an official statement on these I will defer my judgment.

I you try and design a new camera and have decided it will be an SLR there are a couple of items you need to "package" into the design. I use the term package as I learned to use it while working for an automobile manufacturer. Among others these are:

On the inside: the mirror box, sensor, shutter, and the prism, the battery – quite sizeable – and on the outside the display, the controls, the grip. Not an exhaustive list, but I will start with these.

The mirror box etc. assembly defines part of the camera. The grip can house the battery – which is handy (pun intended), but how to fit the display. Now you could put the grip to the right of the mirror box – a bit like the medium format designs – and put the display and the controls just on the back of the mirror box – a design a bit like the Rollei 2000/3000 of old, but this would lead to a pretty small display, not sellable in these days I'd say. So you need to extend the body to the right of the box or to the left or both. Esthetically both seems to be more accepted. If you want to keep the body slim – a bit like the bodies of the mirrorless designs, then you do not have much space for controls on the top of the camera. So you move the mode wheel to the back. Around the four-way controller makes sense. Plus a couple of dedicated or programmable buttons . You've got your design.

So I find the K-S1 design is quite logical. Except for the LED's, but the jury is still out about that. I think Pentax has done quite a good job at designing a camera bottom up.